Higher Resolution Imagery

Although you’d never know it just by looking at him, Lunghu has been giving quite a bit of thought to the idea that he should somehow modify his writing ‘voice’ once the Year of the Tiger has rolled over into the Year of the Rabbit. Why? Perhaps to attempt a style of writing more attuned to the Rabbit’s energy pattern.

This is not to say that Lunghu consciously sought to emulate a Tiger writing style (whatever that might be) during the preceding year. Certain thinkers [mo-mo ren] have asserted that the Tiger is passionate, rash, and resistant to authority. In retrospect, it’s by no means certain that what Lunghu has written during these past twelve months can be said to resemble the expository approach –or the subject matter– one would expect from a Tiger.

No animal tranquilizers were used in the making of this picture.

And anyway, what exactly would Rabbit style be? Is it at all helpful to note that the Rabbit has Yin essence, belongs to the Fire element, is associated with the ding Stem and the mao Branch? Ding and mao connote stages of the life cycle characterized by flourishing development, completed growth, full maturity. However, the 2011 Year of the Rabbit will be the xin-mao (literally, bitter-morning) phase of the 60-year Chinese calendar cycle. Furthermore, the Rabbit is clever and ambitious, but so hyper-active that it rarely finishes what it starts. Even worse, the Chinese word for rabbit is also a derogatory slang term for a certain sort of “social undesirable” much-reviled in the PRC (and elsewhere). What does all this mean? How, specifically, might this translate into writing style? Difficult to say.

Could just be that Lunghu will keep on keepin’ on, doing what he knows how to do, how he knows how to do it. Not very Rabbit-like. More like a Horse. Does that count as a resolution?